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There is no alternative! | Michael Krämer | Life & Physicshttps://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2013/may/04/no-alternative-bayes-penalties-philosophy-thatcher-merkel
That is the claim made by the iron ladies to justify their political agendas. Can a scientific theory also be supported by such an argument? <strong>Michael Krämer</strong> discusses a new philosophical proof<p>The late Margaret "Tina" Thatcher claimed that "there is no alternative" to economic liberalism, and our own iron Frau Angela Merkel has defended her controversial fiscal policies for Europe with the very same slogan. It is not surprising that politicians use such thought-terminating cliches to push through their agenda, but remarkably the "there is no alternative" argument also plays a vital role in science. For example, it has been argued that string theory must be the way to unify quantum physics and gravity because we have not found any alternative. While this seems to merely reflect our incompetence, scientific philosophers have now proven mathematically that the "no alternative" argument can indeed provide evidence for a scientific hypothesis. So how does such a philosophic proof work, and what is "scientific philosophy" anyway? </p><p>While most scientists <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2013/mar/24/higgs-philosophy">do not care much about the philosophy of science</a>, almost everyone knows of Karl Popper, and some might have heard of Thomas Kuhn. Both Popper and Kuhn have shaped two important phases of philosophy of science in the 20th century. Popper and his contemporaries were aiming at the grand picture, and have been arguing what is, and what is not, "good science". Kuhn, on the other hand, focused on sociological and historical aspects and initiated a new, descriptive style of philosophy that brought it closer to the actual scientific practice. In his talk at the recent meeting of the <a href="http://www.wissphil.de/gwp2013/announce.htm">German Society for Philosophy of Science</a>, Stephan Hartmann, Director of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, argued that we have now entered a third phase, the phase of "scientific philosophy". Scientific philosophy combines different scientific methods to address philosophical problems, including mathematics, empirical studies and even experiment. Hartmann (with his collaborators Richard Dawid (Wien) and Jan Sprenger (Tilburg)) demonstrated the power of such an approach by analyzing the "no alternatives" argument: can we base trust in a scientific theory on the fact that no alternative has been found? In a <a href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/9588/">recent paper</a> to appear in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Hartmann and his collaborators Dawid and Sprenger provide a mathematical proof of the "no alternatives" argument based on Bayesian statistics. </p><p> <br> P(A|B) = P(A) x P(B|A) / P(B) </p><p>P(England wins on penalties) = P(A|B) = 0.8 x 0.1 / (0.1 x 0.8 + 0.4 x 0.2) = 0.5.</p><p>P(Hypothesis A is true | no alternative has been found) &gt; P(Hypothesis A is true). </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2013/may/04/no-alternative-bayes-penalties-philosophy-thatcher-merkel">Continue reading...</a>SciencePhilosophyPhilosophyMargaret ThatcherAngela MerkelMathematicsPhysicsParticle physicsSat, 04 May 2013 15:27:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2013/may/04/no-alternative-bayes-penalties-philosophy-thatcher-merkelPhotograph: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAngela Merkel: Bayesian? Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAngela Merkel: Bayesian? Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesMichael Krämer2013-05-04T15:27:00Z